This is what we had for dinner tonight. It wasn't as pretty looking as it was on the cookery telly programme I got the recipe from Last night but I'll bet it was just as tasty!!!

Jamie Oliver called it Chicken Paramsan but my Darlin Luffly Husband affectionatly named it Chicken SMASH! :) The recipe is on his website and it's in a short video which means you get to see it all happening.

Well Jamie quotes £2.80 per head for this recipe!?! I about dropped off my seat when he said that and then added the "not too bad really!"

Well I used stuff that was in my freezer already, instead of RSPCA Organic Chicken I used ASDA Smartprice

Chicken, instead of Parma Ham we had good old fashioned Bacon and as the only Parmasan Cheese I had came dried in a tub I opted for freshly grated Chedder. I reckon that the whole meal which included mash and sweetcorn came in at about £5 and would have fed four but as my youngest isn't quite into chewing on stuff yet my Daughter, my Darling Luffly Husband and I kinda pigged out on it. Hehe!

After you layer it up, the Chicken, then the Cheese, then the Bacon on top, it'll look like a really cute parcel. But You have to cover it over with the Clingfilm and then SMASH! it with something big and heavy, like say a big heavy assed copperbottomed frying pan for example. Then after a couple of SMASH!s you'll feel much less stressed and the cute little parcel will look more like road kill which means it'll cook in under 6 mins and will get to the table quicker.

My DLH is wanting this for tomorrows dinner again and it's so quick and tasty I think it will take a permanant place on the list of things to cook for DLH when I want something new or expensive. :)

I've been caught up and swept along in a craze. It's a bit late in getting to me as the book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, that started the tide rolling was published about a year back. The recipe I followed, Simple Crusty Bread was an adaptaion from the book which gives loads of variations for the basic dough recipe.

What appealed to me most about this 5 minute bread is that it doesn't need any kneading. I HATE kneading bread and it's put me off having homemade bread in the house everyday beacuse it's just to time consuming with the kneading and the proving and the rising and the re-rising etc etc but this recipe takes all of that away!!!

It's just four ingredients, Flour, yeast, Salt and Water, mix it in a bowl, set it aside to rise, shove it in the fridge till your ready to use it, pull some out, shape into a tin and let it warm up then shove it in the oven. I didn't believe that it would be so soft and nice and tasty with out Kneading it but I was pleasantly surprised.

If you have ago, leave a comment and let me know how you got on with it.

Good Luck!

This is what my First Handspun on Halona, my Ashford Traveller became.

The pattern is called BagLove and it's perfect for holding a full centre pull ball in so it doesn't get tangled at the bottom of your project bag. The pattern is really easy, great for a beginner like me and brill coz it knits up into no time ( about 3 nights in my case but I'm a really slow knitter) and you get something really useful at the end of all your hard work.

I love mine and I love that it's made with my own handspun.

This spinning and knitting thing is more addictive than I could have ever have believed! I'm sooooo inl ove with my little bag coz I spun, knit and now I can use it and I did all myself.

WOOHOO!

Here is what Halona can produce! She did it all by herself I'm sure. It's a lot smoother and easier to spin on that my first Wheel and this 100g or so of carded Icelandic wool seemed to go on to the bobbin so quickly, and then another bobbin went the same way so I plied them together and that was all done in one night (ish) I think I may have plied it the following morning but it all went to fast I forgot. lol :)

I'm well chuffed with it, it's not perfect but I can definitly see an improvement! I've got 200g of Corriadale that I'm gonna try next I hope I can do it justice :/

I'd like you all to meet Halona. I've called her this as the meaning of the name is well suited to the circumstance she came to us under.

I blogged recently that I had gotten an old Spinning Wheel out of my Classifieds for £25 but what I didn’t then know was that if you run it Anti-clockwise to ply you ended up with the Bobbin, Flyer, and whorl all unscrewing themselves! lolSO it was time for a new plan!!!

I’ve been procrastinating with listing some stuff on Ebay but when my Spinning wheel broke the listings went up super quick as I NEEDED a new Spinning wheel.

Well Karma/Spinning Gods/ my Grandad looking down from above/call it what you will, was shining down on me today coz my Darling Luffly husband picked up another bargain at the carboot!!!

So, Here is Halona, She is my new Ashford Traveller with 9 Bobbins in almost-new-but-been-neglected-just-needing-some-loving condition. We got her for a heaven sent price of only £50 (honest) and she spins like an angel (shame I don't but I'm sure pratice is all I need)

P.S. Halona means: Of Good Fortune.

This is what I made with my First Yarn - It's a Tribble - a knitting pattern inspired by some fluffy round thing in a sci-fi movie. The pattern called for cotton so at least you'd be able to wash the dishes with it. But what I wanted this pattern for was because it used a tiny yardage and meant that the 48 yards I'd spun would be enough to complete it :)

So here it is, my 48 yards of handspun is now a Tribble that if I tried to wash the dishes would decrease 50% in size and therefore become even less useful :(

I love it though, it's my first handspun project and I think it's a work of art!

This is the first handspun yarn I've done on my £25 spinning wheel I got from Gumtree. I used Carded Icelandic wool From the Twist Fiber Craft Studio.

It's really over spun and it's really uneven in width and texture but I don't care! I've really chuffed with it :) even although it does feel like horsehair twine :(

The only Problem I had with doing this is that my Cheap Old spinning wheel is fine going clockwise do to the singles, However, when it came to running Anti Clockwise to do the plying the Whorl, Flyer and Bobbin all unscrewed from each other and made Plying very frustrating indeed as I had to stop every two mins to tighten everything back up. As you can see from the pick though... I got there in the end.

I present my first Skein to the world! :) :) :) :)